by Thynne, Jane
Canaris? Arthur Nebe? And the head of the Berlin police? Clara was stunned at the level of the people involved.
‘The idea is, if we raid the Gestapo, SD and SS offices, we should turn up enough evidence to try all the key players and provide legitimacy for the coup to the rest of the world. At the same time we’ll have a ready-made list of names and addresses of Gestapo informers to be rounded up and arrested.’
He stubbed out his cigarette, and immediately lit another.
‘They’ve decided that tomorrow’s the time to strike.’
‘Tomorrow!’
‘It has to be. The country must be on the brink of war before a coup like this could succeed. That’s the only circumstance in which army officers could be persuaded to rise up against Hitler. Only a lunatic would underestimate the force he exerts on the minds of the people. The only way they will accept their Führer’s arrest is as an alternative to dragging us into a senseless war. And it looks very much as though that is what Hitler has in mind.’
‘So what will happen?’
‘Captain Friedrich Heinz, a colleague of Oster’s, has a commando unit of twenty men who will assemble at dawn at army headquarters in Bendlerstrasse. They will be issued with grenades and guns with instructions to take the Chancellery by force. The commander of the Berlin military district, General von Witzleben, will be escorted to the Chancellery by a unit of thirty active army officers to perform the arrest of Hitler.’
Clara thought of the impenetrable wall of black-suited SS who formed around the Führer at all times.
‘But surely Hitler’s protected by his own bodyguard. They’ll die before they give him up.’
‘The Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler consists of thirty-nine men and three officers. They are all specially selected and personally approved by the Führer himself. Only twelve are on duty at any moment. There is one security guard at the main entrance of Wilhelmstrasse 78, and one at Hitler’s residence at number 77. There are other armed guards around the Chancellery and special security officers who work at reception. They look like ordinary reception officers but they are trained to recognize people of interest. Potential assassins. However, that number of guards is not an overwhelming security force. A commando raid of twenty would certainly be able to overcome them.’
‘And what then?’
‘The 23rd infantry division is based in Potsdam. They will be ordered to march on Berlin and occupy all key ministries, radio stations, police, Gestapo and SS installations. They’ll seize Himmler, Goering and Goebbels. We will need to occupy all the transport and communication centres in Berlin. For the purposes of this operation Oster’s codename is Uncle Whitsun. Hitler is Emil, the Reich Chancellory is Mount Olympus.’
Brandt’s eyes rested on her, tender and probing, and suddenly he clattered the cup down on its saucer and got to his feet.
‘Forget this coffee.’
He strode over to the decanter and filled a glass, gave it a squirt of soda and turned to face her.
‘This is where you come in.’
Until this moment, Clara was too astonished by the details of the plot to question why she herself was there but though she remained entirely still, she felt a pulse of alarm at the confirmation that her role in this audacious attempt had already been decided.
‘How exactly?’
‘The coup is timed for eleven o’clock. We have a civil servant from the Foreign Ministry who will unlock the double doors of the Chancellery from the inside so we can get to Hitler’s quarters. Welzer will be inside already, but he’s leading a squad of men who will come through the private entrance to the Reich Chancellery. You probably didn’t know about the private entrance.’
Clara recalled Eva Braun’s comment. I have to go in and out through a private entrance, in case anyone sees me.
‘Eva Braun mentioned it.’
‘It’s a side door that barely anyone knows about. It was put in in 1935, at the same time that they built the bunker under the ballroom. It’s accessed through a concealed door in the ballroom wall. You go down some steps but instead of entering the shelter, you turn right, up another flight of steps, and the door is there. It opens onto the Chancellery garden. From there, there’s an entrance onto the Wilhelmstrasse, just between the Agriculture Ministry and the old Presidential palace. It was put in place in case Hitler ever needed to make a quick exit. Very few people know about it and it’s always kept locked. Only a few people have the key and one of them is Fräulein Braun. We need you to go to the Chancellery in the morning and find a pretext to encourage Fräulein Braun to open the entrance. Although preferably you’ll obtain the key from her and do it yourself.’
‘What if she’s not in?’
‘She will be. They arrived in the Führer’s train last night. You need to be at the main entrance of the Chancellery at ten o’clock and say you’re visiting Fräulein Braun.’
‘And if I find her? What then?’
‘Get the key from her and take it down to the entrance. Make sure the door is unlocked by eleven o’clock. Then leave. Nothing else.’
His attitude had changed now. He was no longer protective, but intensely focused.
‘What will happen to Eva?’
‘Initially, she’ll be arrested.’
‘And then what will they do with her?’
‘Precisely what the Nazis do with their enemies. Shoot her, most probably.’
Clara recoiled. Eva was a twenty-six-year-old woman, as girlish as the perfume she wore – violets and vanilla shot through with a touch of steel and self-pity. She was privy to the secrets of a monstrous dictator. But did she deserve to die for it? A bit of a butterfly. That was how she described herself. Who broke a butterfly on a wheel? Observing her hesitation, Brandt came to sit beside her.
‘It’s the only way, Clara. This is no time for sentimentality.’
‘It’s not sentimentality. Eva Braun’s guilty of no crime. You can’t visit the sins of the men on their women, not when the women are as naïve and gullible as Eva is. She isn’t part of what he does.’
‘She’s part of his game.’
‘But life’s not a game. It’s not like chess. It’s not all about black and white. There are grey figures too.’
He took her hands and gazed at her searchingly.
‘There’s no room for grey figures now. You’re either for us or against us. These people would kill you at the drop of a hat. In fact you’d be lucky if they killed you straight off. If you are going to be able to fight them, you need to be able to kill too.’
‘You and I are fighting for a state that upholds the rule of law. A state that doesn’t execute people without trial. Promise me, Max, if you have any influence, you’ll prevent them shooting her. Don’t let her come to harm.’
He rose abruptly and walked back to the cocktail table, where he helped himself to another draught of whisky and stood for a moment, gazing down at Clausewitzstrasse below. Then he turned.
‘All right. I understand. In fact, I agree with you. We should never stoop to the level of these gangsters. I give you my word. You’ll need this.’
He felt in his inside pocket and passed her a tightly folded piece of flimsy tracing paper, the size of a playing card.
‘What is it?’
‘A floor plan of the Chancellery. I’ve marked the location of the private entrance and of Eva Braun’s room.’
Clara took out a bullet-shaped gold tube of Elizabeth Arden Velvet Red lipstick from her bag.
‘What are you doing?’
‘It’s almost finished, unfortunately.’ She folded the paper and rolled it tightly. ‘And like everything else now, there’s a shortage of it.’
She inserted the paper into the empty tube.
‘I am being followed, Max. You warned me, and yesterday I saw the man for myself. He tailed me halfway around the city before I managed to lose him. If I’m arrested, I don’t want to have a floor plan of the Reich Chancellery in my hand. This is not ideal, but it’ll have to
do.’
He smiled as she returned the lipstick to her bag.
‘You’re right. They’d have to be very thorough to check a woman’s lipstick.’
‘What if we don’t succeed?’
For the first time a flash of fear crossed his face and she felt a corresponding spark of fear leap inside her.
‘Our people have been driving around Berlin, seeking out escape routes through gardens and across rooftops, just in case things turn nasty. I would advise you to think very carefully about a route yourself. And perhaps a place to stay, if you can’t go home.’
He reached over and touched her cheek. His gaze was serious and intense.
‘There’s still time, you know, if you don’t want to take the risk, to say. No one would blame you.’
‘I do. I’ll do it.’
‘Be brave, darling Clara. It’s better to have tried and failed, than not try at all.’
On the Ku’damm, the last vestiges of warmth had gone and worry whipped the streets like a dry wind. As Clara threaded through the crowds the weight of the huge secret she possessed pressed down on her. By this time tomorrow, if all went well, the horror that engulfed everyone in Germany could be over and the arrests and persecution would come to an end. She passed a cabinet housing the latest editions of Der Stürmer, which on that day, as so often, bore the banner headline Germany Awake! The Jews are our Misfortune, and she imagined Steffi Schaeffer’s daughter Nina kicking it until it shattered – and then kicking in every Stürmer cabinet in Berlin so that a crystal carpet of glass would spill across the street. The graffiti and Party slogans would be washed away, along with the fear and apprehension in people’s eyes. The Hitler Youth would disband and she could make a visit to England with Erich. She would take him to see the sights – the Houses of Parliament, a play in the West End. She would introduce him to her family. It would be a fresh beginning. Germany would awake, as if from a bad dream.
Back in her apartment she took out the flimsy floor plan of the Reich Chancellery that Brandt had given her and pored over it, trying to fix the route from Eva Braun’s bedroom to the private entrance in her brain. Along the corridor, turn left, down two flights of stairs, cross the ballroom to a door in the panelling three quarters of the way along the right-hand wall and then through an underground corridor to the private entrance. She ran and reran the route in her head. Something about it reminded her of one of those Greek myths Leo used to talk about – Ariadne, she thought it was, who used a piece of string to find a way out of the maze. Suddenly she was no longer able to stem the tides of memory and gave in to wondering what Leo was doing back in England. Was he in an office somewhere, or digging an air-raid shelter in his garden? Trying on a gas mask? Might he even, at that moment, be wondering about her?
She shook her head. She needed to stop thinking like that. Leo was in the past, she was not Ariadne and she had nothing to rely on except her memory. Fortunately her memory rarely let her down.
Eventually, when she was satisfied that she had imprinted the twists and turns of the Reich Chancellery interior into her brain, she took the map to the stove in the kitchen, added some charcoal and watched the flames leap up and consume it.
Then she made herself some toast and black tea, put a Bach symphony on the record player and twiddled the dials of her radio until she found the BBC, keeping the volume set to low and craning her ear against the set. Through the ether came a sepulchral voice, at once solemn and regretful, like a professional undertaker. The Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain was broadcasting to the British Empire.
‘How horrible, fantastic, incredible it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas masks here because of a quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing.’
His polite curate’s voice ran on, incapable of believing any ill of other human beings. ‘I realize vividly how Herr Hitler feels that he must champion other Germans. He told me privately that after the Sudeten German question is settled, that is the end of Germany’s territorial claims in Europe.’
How gullible he was! Could he honestly believe that Hitler had no intention of going further?
Mr Chamberlain wanted Britain to know that he would not rush to war for the sake of the Czech nation.
‘However much we may sympathize with a small nation confronted by a big and powerful neighbour, we cannot in all circumstances undertake to involve the whole British Empire in war simply on her account. War is a fearful thing and we must be very clear before we embark on it.’
Clara felt the sour taste of dismay. If Chamberlain wanted to signal to Hitler that there would be no British opposition to his seizure of the Sudetenland, he could not have done it more clearly.
Eventually, she took a bath, trying to relax, and lay resolutely in bed, waiting for sleep to come and sweep her into oblivion. She was longing for the next day to dawn, and dreading it at the same time. There were just hours to go before Brandt, Oster and his men breached the Reich Chancellery and arrested Hitler. In safe houses strung like an invisible noose across the city, men were preparing for the dawn, rehearsing their movements, making last-minute checks before they slept. Knowing that the next day held the difference between a new start, or arrest and certain death. Clara, too, needed sleep if she was to keep her wits about her, but sleep took a long time to come, and when it did it was torn by fractured dreams, of Leo and Ariadne and herself, following the floor plan of the Reich Chancellery like a maze, trying to find the way out.
Chapter Thirty-one
Rosa waited until lunch hour, when the Führerin had left, and felt in her pocket again for the card she had kept there.
Rupert Allingham
Bureau Chief
The Daily Chronicle
Kochstrasse, 50
Berlin-Kreuzberg
She had liked the English journalist. Apart from their brief exchange she knew nothing at all about Herr Allingham, but the Führerin had been much taken with him, perhaps because of his handsome blond looks, and he was a journalist, which gave Rosa a kind of fellow feeling. Moreover, he was the only person in Berlin – apart from August Gerlach – who had shown the slightest interest in what she had experienced.
Despite the fact that it was a weekday, there was a dejected air on the streets. The newsstands carried reports of the latest atrocities perpetrated against Germans in the Sudetenland. People seemed to avert their eyes as they walked, as though seeking to insulate themselves from the world and all the bad news it contained. But no matter what was happening beyond the country’s borders, in Berlin Hitler’s building jag continued unalloyed. As Rosa skirted around the rubble of a construction site, she looked down at the card in her hand to check the address once more.
The newspaper district in Kreuzberg was familiar from her days of tramping around, applying for journalistic jobs. The small grid of streets housed the offices of the hundreds of titles, from the giant Ullstein and Mosse publishers, which had now been certified as Jewish enterprises, to the Scherl publishing empire, as well as the offices of countless printing companies and photographic agencies. For a long time Rosa had deliberately avoided this part of town, but the sight of Mosse House, Erich Mendelsohn’s striking, modernist building which housed the Berliner Tageblatt, sent a fresh thrill through her. With its sensuous curves of aluminium and glass, as though a spaceship had landed in the midst of the city, it seemed like a taste of the future, even if the Tageblatt itself, hated by Goebbels, was rapidly becoming part of the past. Mosse House was so much more exciting than Angriff House, the dour headquarters of the Nazi propaganda sheet, with its billowing black banner outside. To Rosa it seemed that everything about the district, with reporters rushing through revolving doors, motorbikes arriving with the latest copy and photographers carrying cans of film, pulsated with life.
She found Rupert Allingham at his desk, eating a bread roll and a couple of sausages. When she opened the glass-fronted door he looked up eagerly, as though he was expecting someone else, but whe
n he saw it was her, his face fell. His eyes were bloodshot and his face speckled with stubble and she sensed he had no recollection of her at all. She flourished his card to jog his memory.
‘Thank you for seeing me, Herr Allingham. I feel a bit of a fool. Taking up your time when you could be doing something more important.’
‘Not at all.’
He gestured towards a chair, and she had to brush a little cigarette ash from the worn plush before sitting down. The office was nothing like any of the places Rosa had visited in her pilgrimage around the newspaper district. It was far dingier and more chaotic. It contained only two chairs, a cheap-looking desk and a filing cabinet sagging half open like a broken jaw, spilling its contents. A tower of yellowing papers was stacked precariously against the wall, beneath a calendar featuring Brandenburg Scenes tilting drunkenly, and manila files of cuttings were piled everywhere. The mantelpiece was stacked with cards and invitations, several deep, and in a bookcase to one side she noticed books by authors she was sure had been ruled degenerate.
He gave the décor a desultory wave.
‘I’m afraid my office assistant has left me to get married. She seemed to think her husband required her presence more than I did. Hence,’ he nodded weakly at the chaos, ‘all this. Entropy, I think Mr Einstein called it, though I doubt even he could make sense of what I find in these papers. Do you read many newspapers? You wouldn’t believe how many I have to plough through, though frankly I prefer the arts pages. They’re so much less depressing, especially since our far-sighted Propaganda Minister banned negative reviews. However, if you know any fine young woman who would enjoy running a newspaper office, let me know, won’t you?’
‘I will.’
‘Though God knows how long I’ll be here for. If Winstanley proves awkward, I might be off to Prague. Damn.’
He flicked away the trail of ash that Rosa had already noticed down the tweedy lapel of his suit.
